


Drunken letters

by Stormyflower



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A LOT of Angst, A lot - Freeform, Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Desperate Harry, Draco has issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heartbreak, Letters, Love Letters, M/M, Murder, Poor Draco, like seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:37:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4477883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stormyflower/pseuds/Stormyflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t write “Dear” to your archenemy. I don't know why I'm writing to you, Harry. Blaise says I'm drunk. Blaise says it's stupid to write to you. But I don't know what it means to be stupid anymore, Harry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Green and Y

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a simple, harmless oneshot but somehow it ended as a very angsty, very long story about Draco, Harry, love and difficulties. I hope you like it, if someone can recommend a beta or would like to beta this story himself I would be very glad! ;)

Incredulously Harry Potter stared at the piece of paper the ink-black owl had just carried through his window.

 

Hey Harry.

Do you know, how weird this feels? Writing this letter? First I wanted to write “Dear Harry” but then I didn’t. You don’t write “Dear” to your archenemy. No, you simply don’t.  
You’re going to wonder why I’m doing this. I would wonder too. Honestly. But what can I say? I don’t know either.  
The moment just felt like it. Writing to you, I mean. Do you know these moments, Harry? When the atmosphere starts to accumulate in that special way and your thoughts start to go in circles?  
I’ve never understood why Muggles like to go in circles. I hate that. It feels terrible. I’m dizzy. I don’t like being dizzy. That’s why I’m writing to you. To make it stop.  
And maybe a little bit because I want to. Write to you.  
Everything’s turning, Harry.  
Around you. Always around you. You, you, you. It’s always turned around you, since the beginning, do you know that? They all, they’re all going in circles. And there you are, standing in the middle, not knowing where to look.  
I don’t think you like it, standing in the middle. I’m sure you get dizzy too, sometimes.  
Blaise says it’s the alcohol. But I don’t believe him. It’s just been a tiny little sip. A tiny little sip, going in circles. Blaise also says that it’s stupid, writing to one’s archenemy when one is that hammered. And then he passes out.  
I don’t think it was just a sip. I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything, Harry.  
Harry, Harry, Harry. I like that, you know? The H. And the Y. You can swirl it. I don’t write that, usually. Harry. Harry sounds like, like, like. Like you. With a swirl in the Y. When I write Potter I always think that you hate me. And I see your stare, then. It’s beautiful, you know, even though it’s vicious. Not all vicious things are ugly, Harry. Beautiful things are much more dangerous.  
I don’t really hate you. But you hate me and that’s alright. I hate myself too, sometimes. That’s alright, totally alright.  
I don’t think it’s possible to hate you. No, I know, I know, I know. You’re way too good. And too beautiful. Sometimes I wish I were you. With the whole circles and that stare, your stare. Usually it isn’t even vicious, not usually. Only when you look at me. Actually, I only want to see you smile. And to see this green. I’ve always liked green. Especially your green.  
It’s like, like, like. Like flying. And like a swirl in the Y.  
I like you too, Harry, do you know? Always have. And Blaise’s right.  
I think if it wasn’t for me you’d like Blaise. He’s almost as kind as you are. And he’s got black hair, too.  
Blaise says it’s stupid to write to you and he’s right. But I don’t understand what it means to be stupid anymore. I’m tired.  
H A R R and a swirled Y. Harry, Harry, Harry.  
Tomorrow I’ll have to hate you again. I don’t want to. Not in the slightest, Harry.  
I shouldn’t send this letter. The envelope is green. But not as green as you are. Nothing’s as green as you are. Nothing, nothing, nothing.  
How does it feel to stroke your hair? Like owl-feathers? My owl is black, just like your hair. But everything else about you is white, Harry, pure.  
And you hate me. That’s alright. I’ve never hated you. Blaise says I love you. I don’t think I know how that feels, love.  
If it’s love, Harry, then love’s nice. Even if it pulls at that place beneath your heart and hurts. And tingles weirdly. Maybe that’s the firewhiskey, though. But love means Harry, too, and green, and Y.  
Love is nice, Harry. Not as nice as you are.  
I’ll go to bed now. Blaise will be grumpy. But he started it, after all.

Harry, Harry, Harry.

Your Draco


	2. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's answer - very sober, very confused, slightly pathetic. I hope you enjoy it a little bit and stick around until next sunday ;)

Dear Draco.

I think it is okay to write “Dear”. That’s allowed, even between archenemies. You’re dear to me, anyway. And sometimes you’re even a nice person. When you think there’s nobody watching. I’m watching you, Draco, all the time.  
Yes, I’m asking myself how you ended up writing such a letter. And I don’t know. But there’s so much I don’t know and this one thing is small in the crowd. I didn’t know that you are so good with words, either, but I should’ve known. You’re good in all the things you do. And you aimed your words well. Deep down inside me there’s a sore spot and it belongs to you alone.  
A sore spot you hit with your words, over and over again. It starts to bleed, after a while. Bleed, burn, heal, bleed… it’s a circle, you’re right, a circle.  
I have scars, not only exterior. Those inside are much worse. Yours is the worst.  
You managed, again, to hit, Draco Malfoy. And now I sit here writing your name and feel the pain sharper than usually. If you’re not there I can ignore it, usually. Ignorance, what a weapon against heart-break. I don’t want to ignore them anymore, the wounds inside. Yet I wish I could now. Ignore your scar. But I can’t.  
Congratulations, Draco, you found something that hurts even more than your daily words. Sincerity.  
You’re so sincere, writing, Draco, so open. Painfully open. I wish I could look at it from a neutral perspective. Become cold again and keep my mask firmly on. Yes, indeed, my mask. They all say you’re wearing one. Your personal ice mask. But in reality we’re all wearing masks, aren’t we, Draco? Everywhere, all the time. And the rare, most beautiful moments are the ones where the masks fall.  
I’ve lost my mask, Draco. You stole it. Your open words, your sincerity, made it slip and fall and you have picked it up, taken it away. Without my mask your arrow hits me directly. It’s bleeding again. Worse than usually. I don’t know how to close the wound.  
Hermione noticed, just as she always notices. It’s got to be pretty obvious that my mask is missing, judging by her worried glances. She says I ought to answer you. I’m doing it now. The third time, actually, but I’ve burned the first two tries. I’m so done with being hurt. All I want is peace, Draco, nothing more.  
You don’t hate me, you wrote. I’ve read this sentence, again and again. I don’t believe it, Draco. Are you lying? Is it possible to lie so beautifully? Your letter was beautiful. Way too beautiful. It can’t be real. Are you lying, Draco?  
I hate you, you wrote. That’s a lie. I don’t hate. I’m way too weak to hate. I wish I could, you know? Hate. But I can’t. Especially not you.  
It hurts, Draco. It hurts to read, so much that I can’t even cry. A lonely tear would be great now, and very appropriate. I can’t cry. Not anymore.  
Love, you wrote, Draco. Love.  
And another cut added to the scars inside. Your scars.  
Your lies are beautiful, Draco.

I wish I could hate you.  
Harry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is: The second chapter :D Thanks for all your kudos and comments, you make me so happy! Feel free to comment again ;) What did you think? Too sober? What do you think will happen next? Tell me! =D


	3. intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter - very short, and unedited, as I'm on the other side of the world right now and just savouring the few minutes of internet I've got - sorry so much for abandoning you all!!!

Malfoy,  
I don’t know what you wrote in that letter to Harry. I don’t think I want to know. But please, DON’T DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT AGAIN! And if there’s only a tiny bit of honour in you blond head, than make sure that he gets okay again!   
Hermione Granger

Granger,  
What are you talking about? I didn’t write a letter to Potter. But, believe it or don’t, I don’t want him to be sad. What am I supposed to do?  
Draco Malfoy.

Granger,  
When came the letter you mentioned?  
Malfoy

Hi Malfoy.  
Yesterday night. Harry read it this morning. Has he answered?

Hi Granger,  
I was drunk and can’t remember anything. Don’t know what I wrote. No he didn’t answer. Why, should he?  
Malfoy

Malfoy,  
Do you really not know?  
Granger

Granger,  
Do you think I’m lying?

Would that be strange?

Granger,  
I’m completely serious. Do you know, what I wrote?

Why should I tell you?

Please.

Alright, alright. I don’t. He didn’t want to show me. 

Thanks, Granger.  
Draco Malfoy

You’re so full of shit  
Granger


	4. Ignorance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM BACK!!! Yay ;D And to make up for abandoning you all for so long I have brought my next chapter with me... :D  
> Tell me if you like it! (I'm sorry for possible mistakes - my system runs the wrong way now. I'm still in pacific time.)

Draco,  
Be careful with what you wish for. Ignorance. I wrote ignorance. Merlin, I’ve been so stupid. Ignorance and numbness and the following loneliness. It hurts, Draco. Worse than sincerity, even that.   
I’d almost go as far as saying that I wish you’d hate me again. Hate, just the way you always did. This Draco-way. It’s cruel. But it’s Draco-cruel and it’s beautiful. And even better: I can see your beauty, and talk to you even though it are those words, your well-aimed words that always hit.   
But that’s impossible and I’m numb. Empty. Do you know these moments in autumn, the few calm ones, when you miss the despised wind? Those moments when you miss the loathed thing simply because it’s always been there?  
You don’t talk, Draco, neither do you write. I can’t hear you, I can’t see you anymore. I’m trying, all the time, but it’s gone. Like a door, brutally shut in front of me. Like a sheet of paper with erased ink. It looks like any other sheet but it’s infinitely emptier.   
I’ve become silent, Hermione says.  
Yes, I’m silent, and I ignore. My mask is back. Inside I’m screaming.   
Even though my heart is deaf, I feel as if I hear the echo of it.  
I can’t even feel your scar anymore. There’s a slight throbbing, nothing more.   
It gets worse when you’re near me. I should be happy, I’m not.   
You don’t look at me anymore.  
Before you always did. Looked at me, you never really saw me.   
Now you don’t see at all.   
Throbbing is worse than real pain, Draco. Pain I can handle. I can’t handle throbbing, I can’t get a grip on it and I can’t see.  
I’m blind, Draco, and numb and I’m afraid.  
I can ignore it. It’s all so numb, Draco.  
I miss the pain.   
It’s always been a part of you.  
Without the pain I’ve got nothing.

Well, maybe I’ve got memories. You don’t even know them yourself, even though they’re yours. So many colours between silver and grey. Anthracite-grey shadows of feelings. I try to paint with them on the red walls of my heart, but I can’t seem to get the colour right, regardless of how hard I’m trying.  
There are grey lines in the red, but they are cheap substitutes for the real colour. I want to erase them but they’re sticky and stubborn just like you were.  
There’s rain on my window, crying. I’m envious, Draco. The rain can just cry all the time, without being bothered about it. It’s painfully beautiful.  
I like the rain. The pain is pleasant. I wish I could just go out in the rain, feel something.  
I can’t see, Draco.   
Nothing.  
It’s all numb.  
Ignorance is the worst that can happen to you, Draco.  
Not to be able to feel pain is way worse than having to bear it.   
Love, Draco, Love.  
You can ignore Love, too.   
Love is much more dangerous than pain.  
And I’m afraid, Draco, so afraid.  
I’m protecting myself. It’s an instinct.  
Love, Draco, Love for me.

It’s all numb.  
I’m afraid, Draco.

Harry


	5. I hate you, Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prepare for angst!

“I hate you, Malfoy!” 

 

“I just don’t understand. Why can’t you just talk to him?”  
“Are you crazy? He’d laugh at me.”  
“You’re writing him, still.”  
“I can deny letters, Hermione.”

 

“Draco?”  
“He hates me, Blaise.”  
“No, he doesn’t.”  
“You don’t know what his eyes are telling me. He said it in my face, too.”  
“I’d be confused too, in his situation.”  
“He wrote to me again.”  
“Did you answer him?”  
Only a desperate look.  
“So no?”  
“What am I supposed to do, Blaise?”  
“Be honest.”  
“What does that mean?”

 

The smell of breakfast in the great hall. Clattering of plates and cutlery. Blabbering students.

“Look, Draco, there’s the daily prophet!”  
“I wrote to Harry.”  
“WHAT?”  
“The truth.”  
“For real?”  
“Yes.”  
“…”  
“That’s good, right?”  
“Yes. Yes it is. I… I’m going to read now, alright?”  
“Yes, of course.”  
Reading silence.  
“Someone murdered we know?”  
“Harry Potter.”  
Choking sounds. 

 

Whispering, all over the hall.  
“Harry Potter.”  
“What? Harry…”  
“Potter…”  
There are a few empty places at the Gryffindor’s table.   
There’s a student with the Slytherins who thinks he’s going to die.   
And then the anger comes.  
Draco Malfoy rises and his face is cut from stone as he leaves the hall.

Deadly injury? – The boy who lives in live-danger!  
Harry Potter (18), who’s returned to the Hogwarts School for witchcraft and wizardry after his amazing deeds in the magical and at the same time starts his career as an Auror at the ministry of magic, has been found severely injured at the school grounds last night. ”He just wanted to go for a walk”, tells us Hermione Granger, a good friend of the heroic student. The injured was found by a teacher who noticed flashing lights in the dark. A group of former followers of you-know-whom had gathered around Potter and overwhelmed him. The attackers could escape, it’s probable however that former war-criminals were under them, people like Mr. Nott, Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Malfoy. “It’s shocking news so soon after the end of the war. Especially these men whose liberty must be seen as mercy of the Ministry of Magic ought to know better”, explains the angry headmistress, Minerva McGonagall this morning. Our hero is being treated at the St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries and is watched carefully 24 hours a day. According to the chef physician Mr. Frey, Potter has been sent into a magical healing-trance out of which he’s got to wake up through his own strength.   
For further information go to page 6. 

Accompanied by a short flash of light a figure appears in front of the pompous entrance of Malfoy Manor. A hood is pulled back and reveals fair hair, pulled together in a pony-tail and pale, aristocratic features. A peacock that’s picking the ground in front of the entrance looks up and disappears with a frightened squeal behind a bush. The visitor isn’t irritated by that and heads towards the house.


	6. Dracos letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For all those who might be confused: This letter was written the evening before the breakfast in the last chapter. It's Dracos "truth" and he doesn't know Harry's been attacked yet.

Harry,

I tried writing this letter when I was sober. Really, Harry, you have to believe me, I wanted to tell you all. But the bottle on the edge of my table is so full; she’s got to feel so heavy. As if you’ve eaten way too much and just tip over. Fump. Just like that. I simply had to help her. You of all people ought to understand.

You and your fucking helper syndrome. Why do you always need to help them all, Harry? I don’t understand that. Maybe I’m just not good enough to understand that. To understand you… They don’t deserve your help, Harry. Nobody does. Just save yourself. You’re the only one deserving that. The only one, Harry.

Hehe. The only one. The chosen one. The boy who lived. I hate that, Harry. I hate them. How they crawl before you. But I can understand. Your attention, it’s all about your attention. Harry, help me, Harry, do this, Harry, be here for me, Harry, take my hand, Harry, kiss me, Harry, fuck me, Harry, marry me! God knows what else they’re screaming.

I hate them. How can you degrade yourself like that?

Blaise says I’m supposed to tell you the truth. The truth, Harry. I don’t know if I can.

The truth is, Harry, the truth is I only hate them because I’ve never dared to go to them and scream with them. Even though my heart always does. Begging for your attention.

You hate me. You said so yourself, in front of all these people. The screaming people. But then there are your letters. I called them snip-snip letters.

Snip-snip, snip-snip.

They cut my heart, in little snippets just as my cousin always did with the papers with the many numbers on daddy’s desk. He always got incredibly angry. I do too, sometimes. I start screaming then. And then I look in your eyes and it goes snip-snip again. Can eyes break, Harry?

I don’t understand, Harry, and I never have. All things with your name in them are weird and confusing and chaotic and colorful and beautiful.

The truth.

Alright, the truth.

In the beginning there was just a name. Potter, Potter, Potter. The volume changed with the seasons. Your name can be snarled wonderfully, and whispered and spit out and gasped.

After the name there were the eyes. A cloak that was way too large. The incomprehension of a whole world. A world I was certain to know better than anybody else.

A stretched-out hand and again your name. Potter meant insecurity and power, worth. I always wanted to have all precious and powerful things. And I was used to getting them. Instead Weasley snatched it from me. 

I was angry, Harry, so angry.

Then again your eyes and eyebrows above them, pulled more closely together every time. Your eyebrows are so cute, Harry.

Friends. Gossip, whispering. Potter, Weasley and Granger. The golden trio. Even back then. I pretended to hate them when I was envious, Harry, without knowing it. Weird, how much you can feel without knowing, isn’t it.

Glory, power, victory, jealousy, envy, Potter.

Love, friends, worry, help, hope, Harry. 

How can you be so many things at the same time? I couldn’t do that, Harry. Maybe that’s why you hate me, because I’m so much less than you are. That wouldn’t even be wrong. I hate myself, Harry. Snip-snip.

Success after Success and in between even tighter pulled eyebrows and envy.

Then, the fourth year.

Do you know how much I stared at you? How much I admired your flight against the dragon and how worried I was when you didn’t turn up? How much I despised the other champions for not fishing you out of the damn lake? And then the labyrinth. The rumors the owls from home brought every day. I wanted to shout at you not to go in the fucking maze. I wanted to pull you back by your arms, wanted to go with you if need be, to make sure you’d not get hurt. Bright light. The portkey.

I was glad that he’d died. You’ve got to hate me. But I only thought: Better him than you.  
The great hall in mourning-colors. I wasn’t just mourning Voldemort’s return, I was mourning an illusion. A pleasant lie. I knew now, who I was, who I ought to be. I hated myself.

Fifth year. The growing need to sweep a thumb over your cramped eyebrows and ease out the wrinkles, to skin Chang for touching you. Soon not to be ignored. I put it away with the cheap excuse of pubertal confusion. Diving in the anger, the hatred, the first alcohol, the first kisses, the first sex. Distractions.

Sixth year. Desperation. And then, lying on the floor, the irrational desire to pull you down to me and to kiss your pinched lips soft. The tower. The worry. The shadows.

Seventh year. Insecurity. Desperation. Hurt. Pain. Torture. Immobility. And finally the decision to do it better. Better for you.

“Harry Potter is dead.” Snip-snip.

The truth, Harry. The truth is so simple.

I love you, Harry Potter.

Draco


End file.
